Boulder History Museum buying Masonic Lodge, moving downtown

New facility on Broadway to be significantly larger than Hill location

Seth Frankel sets up the Boulder History Museum s Chief Niwot: Legend & Legacy exhibit in this January photo. The museum is purchasing the Masonic Lodge at 2205 Broadway and hope to move to downtown Boulder by 2014.
(
PAUL AIKEN
)

The Boulder History Museum has signed a contract to buy the Masonic Lodge in downtown Boulder, setting the stage for the Boulder Historical Society to move its collection to a larger, more centrally located site.

Boulder History Museum CEO Nancy Geyer said the move will allow the museum -- now located on University Hill -- to offer a wider variety of exhibits, both from the museum's 40,000 artifacts and from traveling exhibits. It also will allow the museum's focus to expand to encompass the sectors that make Boulder unique, including science and technology, environmental sustainability, natural foods and fitness.

"It's an expansion of our mission, but we feel we are the museum of Boulder," Geyer said.

Museum officials also want to create a large interactive exhibit for young children to help make up for the lack of a children's museum in Boulder.

The Boulder History Museum has been at its current location in the Harbeck House, 1206 Euclid Ave., since 1987. It rents the house from the city of Boulder.

The historical house allows the museum just 1,500 square feet of display space, and fitting exhibits into the rooms can be challenging.

"It's a really beautiful historical house, but we don't furnish it like an old house," Geyer said. "It's so tight that it's really hard to do cool exhibits. We're really constrained in what we can do."

In contrast, the Masonic Lodge, 2205 Broadway, offers 7,000 square feet of exhibit space. The lodge rooms are large and open, with high ceilings and no windows, providing the perfect blank slate for museum curators designing exhibits.

Boulder History Museum Board President Bob Yates said museum officials spent a year-and-a-half looking for a new location and considered more than 20 sites with a strong preference for returning to the downtown area.

The history museum is not disclosing the purchase price at this time.

Yates said the museum will launch a capital campaign to pay for the move and the increased operating expenses associated with the larger museum.

At every stage, Yates said, the museum will include the public in discussions about everything from building design to new types of exhibits.

"We're not going to impose a museum on the community," Yates said. "This is going to be the community's museum. They're going to help us build it."

The Masons could not be reached Monday. Yates said the Masons will continue to occupy a portion of the building for the near-term.

The building was designed by Boulder architect James Hunter, who also designed the Municipal Building, using some of the same stone facing.

Museum officials said the basic design probably won't change much, but they will try to make it a more open and welcoming building from the exterior.

The location also puts the history museum next door to the Carnegie Library, where many of the museum's 900,000 documents are kept.

Beverly Silva, director of business development at the Hotel Boulderado, said the museum would make a great neighbor to the hotel. The museum's staff and volunteers were instrumental in organizing the Sesquicentennial Old-Timers Reception in 2009, and the hotel maintains a museum display with rotating exhibits.

Silva said the hotel, which currently offers a downtown overnight package with two tickets to the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, also would include the history museum in future guest packages.

The museum hopes to make the move by fall 2014.

Boulder Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Mary Ann Mahoney said the return of the museum to downtown and to a location two blocks from the Pearl Street Mall is "exciting."

The museum previously was located in a portion of the old county courthouse on Pearl Street, in the old Central School and in the old Safeway building at Broadway and Arapahoe, were Alfalfa's is now, before moving to the current site on University Hill.

"The location is great, and it could draw a lot of foot traffic from the Pearl Street Mall," Mahoney said. "There is so much opportunity for a broad museum concept."

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